Various data carrying items, such as credit cards, carry a thin strip of coherent magnetizable material on which information may be encoded magnetically. Such material will be referred to herein generically as magnetic material. Particularly, as in the case of credit cards, when the item is used over relatively long periods of time in many different encoding and decoding machines, it is essential that the application of the strip to the item meets very rigorous standards in order that each coding and decoding machine will accurately read or write the encoded information. For example, the surface on which the strip is affixed must be flat within close tolerances since any appreciable distortion of the surface in the vincinity of the strip will interfere with the proper positioning of the coding and decoding machines' reading or writing head with respect to the strip. Also, the strip itself must not project above the surface of the card to any appreciable extent, for the same reasons. The degree to which the prior art satisfies these requirements leaves much to be desired. The most commonly used device for applying the strip has been a hot stamping machine in which the strip is impacted against the card by a hot stamping tool. In such a machine it is difficult to avoid excessive cupping of the surface of the card which raises rims along edges of the strip with a depression between them. When the force of the impact is decreased, in an effort to avoid excessive cupping, a tendency is created for insufficient bonding of the strip to the card so that the strip tends to peel off. In addition, in such prior art machines, it has been difficult to avoid the creation of air pockets caused by entrapping air between the strip and the card. Whenever such an air pocket occurs, a void is created in the strip which constitutes an unacceptable defect. As a result such machines tend to produce an excessive number of defective strip applications, each of which spoils the card. This is wasteful and expensive since the strip application is usually the last step involved in the production of such cards.
Thus it is an object of this invention to provide a machine for applying such magnetic strips in a highly reliable and inexpensive manner. An additional object is to provide additional features such as automatic prestacking of the completed cards. Further objects will appear as the description proceeds.